Disclosure (story #1)
by Leyla but you can call me spa
Summary: Realizing a connection between herself and Carter, Kerry Weaver goes to see him in Atlanta.


Disclosure

by Leyla Harrison

sparkle72@videotron.ca

Disclaimer: These characters are borrowed lovingly. I promise to return them when I'm finished, with no harm done.

Rating: PG-13

Classification: Weaver/Carter friendship

Timeline: This story takes place after the events of May Day, and has references to that episode and also to All in the Family.

Summary: Realizing a connection between herself and Carter, Kerry Weaver goes to see him in Atlanta.

Author's Notes: I've always been fascinated by Kerry Weaver, particularly this past season. There's so much we don't know about her, but the more we see (or at least the more I see) the more we want to know. That's what this story is about, in a roundabout kind of way. I would love to hear your feedback.

More Author's notes: I've been wanting to write ER fanfic for a while now, but I've never had an idea that I felt was worthy of a good story. Plus, I've never written an ER fanfic; for the last six years I've been writing about the X-Files.

One Last Thing, I Swear: This might become a series of Weaver/Carter friendship vignettes. I'm one of those weirdos who would like to see them together romantically but can't fathom writing about it. Go figure.

***

My leg hurts today. It always hurts, but it's worse when it's going to rain, like I'm some kind of human weather predictor. I hate it.

***

Carter's been in Atlanta for three weeks. Three long weeks of not hearing his voice, or seeing his face. Three weeks of not knowing what has happened to him, how he's doing.

The last three weeks have been agonizing for me. Hell, not just the last three weeks. Every single day since Valentine's Day. No – it goes back even further than that.

Gabe's departure. Yes, that was when it started. Gabe and Jeanie, in the same day, both saying goodbye. Jeanie said goodbye to go to something better. Gabe said goodbye to go into the unknown. When he told me about his suicidal ideation, I broke down. Couldn't stand the thought of the man who had taught me everything I knew wanting to kill himself. I knew the conversation would end at some point, and I didn't want to let him go. It was too late at that point – he was already gone. Not his mind, but his soul. He had already let that go.

I dealt with the double loss in the only way I knew how. I worked twice as hard as normal. My fuse got very short; it felt like everyone was rubbing me the wrong way. I even took a few days off and spent them at home, with the phone unhooked. I didn't do much those few days. I soaked in the bathtub a lot – the cold weather was aggravating my leg. I propped myself up in the hot water and drank vodka straight from the bottle. I had never done that before: drink just to get drunk. But I needed to unplug my mind from everything and I didn't know of any other way to do it.

By February things were better somewhat. And then came Valentine's Day.

I don't force myself to relive the events of that horrific night in my mind. I don't have to; the images come to me in dreams late at night and early in the morning in disjointed fragments. The one that stays with me the most is of course, the worse one. Night after night, over and over, I find myself coming into Exam Three and seeing Carter, then Lucy, each in their matching puddles of blood.

I didn't know which of them to go to first. 

I ended up crouching down next to Carter first because he was closer to the door. He was on his belly and I turned him over, terrified. He's dead, I told myself. He can't be dead, I told myself. I got up and went to the other side of the bed, my crutch and my foot slipping in Lucy's blood. I must have screamed because people came. I don't remember screaming.

I couldn't work on Carter. I simply couldn't. 

I stayed with Lucy. She's a patient, just a patient, I told myself over and over, trying to distance myself. It didn't work. My hands shook as I intubated her. I hesitated before using the sternal saw. 

It was only after she went up to the OR that I managed to get outside. I needed air. There have been many moments in my life when I wanted to be able to run. That night, I wanted to throw down the crutch and run as far from the ER as I could, away from the horror of what had happened. I was overcome with nausea and vomited into a trash can instead.

In my dreams, the images haunt me. Lucy's gaping neck wound. Carter on his belly, lying so still. The blood. So much blood. I've never been queasy; it would be the death knell for any doc, let alone an ER doc. That night though, and in all the nights to follow, it was the blood, the deep crimson pools, that has been in every nightmare, jolting me awake into sheets damp with sweat.

And now Lucy is dead, and Carter is not the same man I thought I knew. 

"Show us your wrists," I said the last time I saw Carter before he stormed out of the room. As I spoke, I knew, just knew, that it was where he injected that damn Fentanyl. Abby had thought it was his arm, but she hadn't seen clearly so she wasn't sure.

I looked at him, trying to speak to him with my eyes so no one else could hear. Into the wrist, Carter? Is that what it's come to? But he didn't hear me. My heart broke. At one point he was physical with me, almost shoving me aside to try to get out of there. That was the moment when I realized I didn't know him anymore.

To confront him with our collective knowledge and our offer of help right there, in Exam Three, where the assault occurred. What was I thinking? I know I was pushing him. Maybe I pushed too far.

I sat at the desk that night for hours. Each time the phone rang my heart sank when it wasn't news about Carter. Finally, hours and hours later, I gave up. I got my coat and was walking towards the door to leave when I heard the phone ringing. No one was at the desk and I sprinted back, as fast as I was able, knowing somehow that it was the call I had waited for. Breathless, I heard Benton's quiet voice, and I relaxed as soon as he said he was in Atlanta with Carter. 

The relief I felt actually washed over me like a physical force; I practically fell into the chair and tears welled up in my eyes. I pulled my glasses off and covered my eyes with one hand, hiding, as always. Peter told me the details. Carter checked into the treatment facility, and Peter was going to stay for a few more hours, then fly back to Chicago in the morning.

Carter was quiet, he said. Defeated. Broken. I didn't ask any questions. I didn't need to. Just knowing he was there, in the care of professionals, just knowing that he hadn't walked out of County and into the dark alone made me feel like things were going to be all right after all.

I went home that night and crawled into bed, overcome with exhaustion. Sometime around three in the morning, I woke up, my leg aching. I automatically reached for the bottle of pills in my bedside drawer. Of course, there were none there. There hadn't been for years. Before, when there used to be pills there whenever I needed them, I was so familiar with the task that I could uncap the bottle, shake two of the pills into my hand and swallow them dry in the darkness.

With no pills to take away the pain, I rolled over onto my side and waited for long minutes before my body got used to the more comfortable position, one comfortable enough to let me fall back asleep. And it was then, just as I was falling asleep, that I was faced with the ugly truth: Carter and I had something in common.

***

I'm in Atlanta to see Carter.

"Have a good vacation, Kerry," Mark said to me before I left. No one asked where I was going. No one ever has. This time I'm glad. I don't want anyone to know.

No one from the hospital, as far as I know, has been to see Carter since he left. I'm glad for this in a selfish way; I want to be the first. I want to see his face and let him see mine and have him know that I care more than the rest of them. That I care enough to come, that I care enough to tell him that I don't think any less of him.

But my firm resolve, my plan, as it is, crumbles when I arrive at the treatment center. They all look alike, these places – kind of like an outpatient unit on a hospital, neat and sterile, nicely decorated but lacking personality. I think of my own house, filled with warmth and music and books and plants. Even the basement, where Carter was living until last year, is such a stark opposite of this place. I realize my hands are clammy and trembling slightly. 

I wonder if he's settled in. I don't have long to wonder; I'm waiting in the common room, which is designed to look like a living room, and one of the nurses, dressed in street clothes, has gone to get Carter.

I hear footsteps in the hallway and I close my eyes for a moment, praying I've done the right thing by coming here.

"Dr. Weaver," I hear, and I open my eyes.

Carter stands in the doorway, his face a mask of surprise, as if he can't believe he's really seeing me here.

"Carter," I say, and stand up. Nerves make me clumsy and for one of the first times in my life, I lose my grip on the crutch and it slips from my grasp. Carter hurries forward and actually gets to it at the same time I do; our hands touch and my cheeks blaze with embarrassment. I've never been ashamed of the crutch before, but for some reason I feel vulnerable in this place.

He takes a step back and looks me up and down. "You look good, Dr. Weaver," he tells me. He looks like he's drinking me in, like I'm a drink of cold water in a desert. I'm assuming this means he's glad to see a familiar face.

"Thank you," I tell him. "You do too, Carter." I'm not lying. The dark circles that were under his eyes when he left Chicago are gone; he's gained some of the weight back that he lost and he looks more like himself. 

We sit down, me on one couch and Carter on a loveseat across from me. A coffee table separates us and there is silence.

"Does it upset you that I'm here, Carter?"

He shakes his head. "I'm surprised, but not upset. No one else has been here. No one's called. I guess I thought everyone had just forgotten about me."

I take a deep breath, exhale. "No one has forgotten, Carter. No one." Least of all me, I add silently. Carter has been in my thoughts for months now, and since he's left, his presence in my mind has been daily and unwavering.

"How are things at County?" he asks. 

"Good," I tell him. I'm about to joke that no one else has died, but I bite my tongue. I don't joke with people well, which is why I rarely do it. But I'm desperate to inject some kind of lightness into the conversation. "It's much hotter here in Atlanta than back in Chicago. I guess we're having a mild summer. A lot of rain and cool temperatures."

Carter nods his head and looks at his lap. He doesn't want to hear about the weather any more than I want to talk about it.

"Carter," I say hesitantly, "I came here to talk to you, to see you." I'm having trouble finding the right words for what I want to tell him. He is looking at me, waiting. It's silly but I wish I had gone over in my head what I was going to say to him more than once rather than just book a flight. I feel unprepared.

"You don't want me to come back to County?" he finally asks, and I shake my head back and forth vigorously.

"Why would you think that?" I ask, surprised.

"Based on how we left things. When I left," he says.

"Carter, the reason we wanted you to come here was so that you could come back to County. That was the whole point. We don't want to lose you. Not as a doctor. Not as a friend." My words are sincere.

I'm reminded of the night he was stabbed, thinking over and over to myself that we would not – could not – lose him. I didn't want to lose either of them, and even though we did everything we could for them, Lucy died and Carter ended up here.

"That's why you came here? Just to tell me that?" he asks, his tone slightly suspicious. 

"I also wanted to know how you were doing," I say.

"You could have called."

"Yes, I could have."

But you didn't, his eyes tell me. You came instead.

"How's it going, the treatment?" I ask. My leg throbs, from the humidity, no doubt. What I wouldn't do for a painkiller. 

Carter lowers his eyes. "All right," he says. "It's funny how once the pain medications are all out of your system, you start feeling another kind of pain." He looks up at me, and gives me a look that says I don't understand. He moves on before I can correct him. "It's more, you know, more than the addiction that got me here."

"Lucy?" I ask.

"Guilt about Lucy," he tells me.

"You have nothing to feel guilty about."

"You don't know. You don't know what I was like to her that day." He is not accusatory, just stating facts. "I lived, and she didn't."

"How you were to her that day didn't cause her death, Carter," I remind him. "You weren't holding that knife."

"If I had listened more carefully to her when she presented Paul to me," he says softly. "Not been so short with her…I might have known, or I might have been able to prevent what happened." He looks off to one side, obviously reliving the day, the words exchanged between them. He looks up at me suddenly. "You were the one who found us."

I nod. I don't want to go there. I don't want to.

"Dr. Benton told me that," he says. "It must have been…" he trails off, as if trying to imagine what it was like when I pushed open the door to Exam Three.

I see them, as if it were happening all over again. Their bodies on the floor. Panic bubbling up from my chest. I look at him now, remembering him then, his eyes closed when I rolled him over, the blood staining the back of his shirt and pooling on the floor around him. 

"Dr. Weaver?" he asks quietly. He wants to hear it. He wants to know. 

"Looking back," I start, slowly, "it took me forever to get there. I stopped in the lounge, then talked to a patient, then to Dr. Chen. There was no way I could have known what was behind the door, but I still wish I had gotten there sooner. Wish that someone had gotten there sooner." I clear my throat, trying to change the subject away from my feelings. "I called for help. We got you and Lucy in the trauma rooms and started working on you."

Carter has always been perceptive. "You feel guilty too?" he asks me quietly.

I nod carefully, my jaw tight with recollection. "If I had been there earlier, the party wouldn't have been so loud. Someone would have heard Lucy call out. Or you."

"But you weren't there earlier," he tells me. "You can't watch over everyone and everything all the time."

I look up at him, feeling a lump forming in my chest. He's touched a nerve but instead of feeling angry I feel frightened. No, I can't watch over everything and everyone, no more than I can keep a tight rein on everything, but it's never stopped me from trying. And there's nothing I hate more than failing – at that or at anything.

No one knows this part of me. No one, I think to myself, knows me at all.

"You must have been terrified," he whispers from across the room, and somehow, I can hear him. 

I'm about to retort that I'm never terrified when I stop short. He's right: I was terrified that night. How does he know? How? Tears well in my eyes and I inwardly curse them, cursing my own weakness because I am powerless to stop the tears. Only a few times in my life have I cried in front of anyone.

My tears alarm Carter and he crosses the room quickly to sit next to me. I am equal parts touched and frightened by his closeness; when he touches my hand, I shake my head, and he draws back.

I make no move to wipe the tears. "I came here for you, not for me to have a breakdown," I tell him.

"I don't think a few tears constitutes a breakdown," he answers with a wry smile. "If that's true, then I've been having one continuous breakdown since I got here."

I smile back. 

I realize in that moment that it's all right. I've cried and he saw it and the world didn't end. He doesn't think differently of me. It's ironic since my reason for coming here was to tell him the same thing.

"Dr. Weaver – " he says, and I shake my head. We've connected and the formality is unnecessary.

"Kerry," I correct him.

"Kerry," he tests the word, my name. "why did you come here?"

"I wanted you to know that I support you, Carter. What you're doing. You have support from everyone at County, but I wanted you to know that you have my support especially."

He looks at me, his silence a question. He has sensed that there is more to my visit.

I take a breath, then put my hand on my leg. "This," I say, "is also why I came."

Carter looks perplexed. "I don't understand."

"I've never told you what happened to my leg." I've hardly told anyone, truthfully, but I don't say that.

"I don't need to know," he responds, shaking his head, and I know he means it, but I need to tell him anyhow.

"It happened when I was in college," I start. The memories come flooding back. I need to keep the retelling to a minimum or I will cry again. "Someone hurt me. Like Paul Sobricki hurt you and Lucy. I was blindsided. I had no idea it was coming."

Carter's eyes widen. "You were…stabbed?"

I don't answer him. I have only vague memories of the trauma team in the ER where I was brought in by ambulance, battered and bloody. The first conscious memory I have was waking up in the ICU after surgery, with a trach in my neck and fiery pain shooting through my leg. One of the surgeons, a woman, talked to me gently. She explained why I couldn't speak, the nerve damage in my leg from where the artery was sliced, the fact that I might not ever walk again because of the shattered femur, explaining how lucky I was to be alive. She explained everything, except the one thing I needed to know most – why did it happen?

The physical scars from my attack are all over my body but no one can see them but me. They are long-healed and have faded into pink lines across my leg, my abdomen, my chest, my neck. I can feel them burning under my clothes as Carter looks at me, his eyes searching, trying to understand.

"I understand, Carter, what happened to you. I've always understood. And to see you as you spiraled downward…I should have told you," I whisper.

Carter shakes his head. "You never had to tell me anything. You didn't owe me an explanation then, and you don't now."

There's more to tell him. "I have permanent nerve damage. And over a series of three subsequent surgeries, the fragments of my femur were reconstructed." He listens, waits. I know what to say next but I don't know if I can.

He puts his hand over mine again, and this time I don't stop him.

"I took painkillers every day until five years ago," I tell him. "I was addicted to them."

I hear his sharp indrawn breath; I know it wasn't what he was expecting to hear.

"Prescribed, of course," I tell him, knowing that he will understand. A good addict, especially one who is addicted because of an injury, knows how to get a doctor to write a prescription for them. All I needed to do was drag out my medical records and they would look at me, their eyes filled with pity, and pull out the prescription pad.

"I wanted to come here and see you, Carter, because I know what you are going through. I understand."

"You knew to look at my wrists," he says, so softly I can barely hear him. 

I nod at him. 

"You're one of the best doctors I've worked with, Carter. And I know you can get through this." I'm firm now, sure in what I'm saying.

"Right now I'm not a doctor," he sighs. "Just an addict."

"And right now I'm not your superior or your colleague. Just your friend."

Now its his turn to cry, and he does so silently. His body is still and his face barely moves as tears fall over his cheeks. I'm overwhelmed by the sudden need to hold him, to take him in my arms, but I hesitate; I don't do physical comfort well. I simply turn my hand over and hold his.

We sit in silence.

He finally, after long minutes, closes his eyes, the tears still wet on his face, and leans into my body, resting his head on my chest. Unsure, I wrap an arm around him and find that it's not as strange as I expected; instead it feels natural.

I feel something remarkable then. It's not something I can explain or even understand completely. It's the feeling of healing. For Carter, and for me.

END

Comments would be greatly appreciated. Send them to:

sparkle72@videotron.ca


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